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Weaning time around here has always meant bringing in the herd, sorting, vaccinating, locking up the calves with their mothers right across the fence for a few days and then taking the cows away.

This year I planted a mix of oats, turnips, radishes and sudan grass right beside my weaning pen. Instead of turning the cows out, we turned the calves out and locked the cows up for 3 days in the weaning pen. The calves went to grazing immediately which was really neat to see. I also put creep feeders with the calves with a ton of weaning pellets made by Purina in each feeder. It took about 2 days for them to figure out the feeders but now they are using them really good. On top of the pellets we filled the feeders with Accuration/corn mix. Accuration is a complete supplement with a limiter that controls the amount of corn consumed. We weighed the steers at weaning and will weigh again in a couple of months after I run out of grazing or get snowed under to figure cost of gain. Our goal is for the steers to gain about 2.5 to 2.7 pounds per day and I am hoping for a cost of gain in the $.60-.70/pound range.
This method makes me wonder why I ever did it any other way.
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